Smart and Interactive Future Homes - Integration of Autonomic Computing and New HCI Methods

Nowadays, huge R&D efforts are running on the re-invention of the Internet so that it is able to cope with future challenges, like the viral growth of the number of connected users, devices, services and usergenerated contents. Today’s houses are slowly turning into a complex electronic net of devices. The increasing complexity of systems and the need for these systems to remain simple, accessible and transparent for the user, makes it necessary to research technologies that enable intelligent and autonomous computing and new ways of interacting with future home. Autonomic computing systems are those which can manage themselves given high level objectives. If we integrate autonomic computing and new interactive user mechanisms like virtual agents, we obtain the future smart homes. These houses would detect the people inside, and self-configure by personalizing the services for each user and detecting new devices plugged to the house: would self-optimize by disconnecting lights or closing doors if people aren’t present: would self-heal by controlling sensors to prevent problems related to physical and software elements; and would self-protect by identifying the current users at home, and preventing external attacks.